Every election you show up
Like a skanky rooster
faithfully marking the morning register.
One would think you bereft of speech
We still hear echoes of your voice;
The roads made of sand
The bridges made of wood
The exports made of wind -
Those haunting echoes
To mark the four year yuletide of forlorn looking ghosts
That forget they ever lived.
Yet here you are
Your speech drawing on our paltry spirits
Hoisted up by our strict diets of expensive carbs -
Purchased by currency
That pants as a man, racing a horse.
You speak and we hear
A comical clash
Between your present talk and your ghostly echoes
We also lend our voices; A third force,
More like third-rate really
Like a measley bus scrunched between two colliding trains.
You speak of roads
Of bridges
Of exports
"Infrastructure"
We see sand
And wood
And wind
And we cheer -
When you say: "Infrastructure"
Like we expect Jericho's walls
To come down -
With our third-rate voices, We
With growing heads and thinning grey matter-
Four more years
And it will all be gone.
This is a protest poem against the activities of politicians in third world countries, who promise the electorate the dividends of democracy every election, fail to deliver their promises, but somehow, still keep getting re elected.
